Janie’s Got A Gun

So here’s the thing: I played games like Cops & Robbers and – yes – Cowboys & Indians (it was a different time) and Star Wars – complete with Light Sabers and sticks wielded as guns and sound effects – p-chew! p-chew! p-chew! – when I was a kid, and I loved it – loved it – and yet I still managed to grow to be a liberal pacifist and so I’m not inclined to a knee-jerk reaction of horror at the idea of children engaging in imaginative play that involves weapons. In theory.

In practice, when my three and half year old daughter cocks her fingers in the form of a gun and points them at me, mock-execution style, I recoil and quietly freak the hell out before telling her, in as calm a voice as I can manage, that it is simply not nice not nice at all to pretend to shoot someone in the face.

Then I debate whether or not to march down to her preschool in the morning and demand to know how and why it is that the preschoolers are engaging in pretend gun-play – because she did not learn this at home – and where the hell are all the princess dollies, dammit? Then I contemplate home-schooling. Then my head explodes.

Then I calm down and ask myself why I need to freak out over everything. Why do I freak out over everything? Is this worth freaking out over? Or, you know, do all preschoolers make a game of executing their mothers every once in a while?

She’s only three. Three. This is nothing, I know, in the bigger scheme of growing up and going to school and making and losing friends and falling in and out love and – oh god – sex and drugs and gah gah gah, but still.

I’m going to need more Ativan.

(Thoughts welcome. Am I freaking out unnecessarily, or is home-schooling in order?)

I can vividly remember in the early eighties, with all the Star Wars mania, turning everything into a gun. My favorite gun/ not-gun was a bright blue toy drill with a yellow “barrel”.

To this day I still think of weapon noises as “pchew, pchew” and not “bang bang”. Later, at kindergarten we were taught not to use objects as play guns. It had to be reinforced a lot (because there were building blocks that were just screaming to be turned into ray guns), but it sticks to this day. When i started teaching there it was the same issue. It takes time and you are doing a great job. (However I caught myself thinking, “those are REALLY good gun noises!” I am a bad influence and I didn’t even know it)

I agree with everyone else that this is a normal “phase” for kids and, short of locking them in the closet, you really can’t keep them away from weapon play.

If you do talk to the school, though, be aware that they may not be encouraging it, but that they can’t eliminate it either. My kids preschool at a strict no-weapon policy. Reminder notes went home on the day they were to bring in “something that starts with S!” that it COULD NOT BE A WEAPON! NO TOY SWORDS, EVEN THOUGH THAT STARTS WITH S. My child still came home one day pretending to shoot people. So, if the preschool basically blows you off? It doesn’t mean they don’t care about your kid. It just means they know what battles are worth fighting.

I think, really, this is all a part of kids playing around with the concept of death.

My son went to the most progressive, loving preschool. They let the kid’s do pretend gun play. I was shocked. The teachers said it was a normal part of development and to squelch that part of them would do more harm than good. As long as you talk to your child about real life consequences she will be fine.Plus my son has made guns out of toast, chicken nuggets, you name it!He’s 10 now and doing just fine!

I was a kid once — heck some people still think I am (those people being in the form of elderly ladies at the mall lecturing me about babies having babies — gimmie a break.)

Until last Thursday. I took my son to the park across the street from our house where he played contentedly on the equipment, going up the stairs and down the slide for what seemed like hours (of fun of course.)

Then, out of nowhere two little boys came around the corner shooting their cap guns (I think that’s what they’re called) No biggie. Whatev. As long as it doesn’t scare the munchkin I’m cool with it.

THEN they had the nerve to start screaming racial slurs and threatening a little African American boy. They proceeded to pretend to shoot him while they did this.As soon as they noticed me coming up to them they stopped and took off. Then I turned around to find them threatening my two year old and pretending to shoot him execution style.I cannot tell you how utterly disgusted and mortified I was.Sick to my stomach.

And I almost kicked a couple of six year old asses.Excuse my language.

I will never bring him back to that park and my son will never have a gun — toy or otherwise.

“Gun play as a child doesn’t equate to being a homicidal gun nut as an adult.. ” ..but I’m willing to bet their parents don’t give a damn. They had to have learned it somewhere, right?

This story portrays me in a really terrible light, BUT it’s the perfect forum for it.

So, a couple years ago, I was in a shop somewhere and there was a small boy – about 4 years old – there with his mom as well. I was making faces and playing with the kid from a distance, which was fine and dandy, and then out of the blue, he made his hands into the shape of a gun and pointed it at me and shot.

And said “BANG! BANG!” and laughed maniacally.

Did I march right over to him? Yes. Did I lean down to his eye level, completely uncaring of whether or not his mother was right there? Yes.

And did I tell that little boy that pointing a gun at a stranger, even a make-believe gun from your fingers, is not nice? Yes.

And did I tell that little boy to NEVER do that again, that he hurt my feelings, and that I would like an apology?

Yes.

His mother was PISSED OFF, but you know? There are some behaviors that are just not okay. Some behaviors that are worth freaking out about.

If it makes you feel any better, I grew up around guns – both antique and not. Most family nuptials brought new meaning to the term “shot-gun weddings” and everyone had an obligatory picture of their children holding a decapitated deer’s head.

Despite – or maybe because of this upbringing, I’m now a gun-hating card-carrying liberal. So don’t fret!

On a side note, if you ever get to write about the vasectomy, I would be eternally grateful. I’m collecting stories to convince my husband it’s the way to go.

I grew up around guns – was given a BB gun for my 10th birthday – often saw my grandfathers antique Colt 45′s sitting around (bullets and all) and am still the liberal pacifist. I can’t even stand hunting (which is so hypocritical because I am very much a meat-eater.)

I’ll probably freak out the first time I see my son pretending to “shoot ‘em up” but I freak out about A LOT of things that aren’t going to matter in the long run.

I wonder what my son will blog about in 30 years with the caption “I can’t Buh-LEEEIVE there was (insert object here) in my house!” I’m sure he’s bound to find something!

Know what? I might freak you out a little bit more with my story… I freaked out when I noticed my son having pretend gun-play as well. And I asked his teachers about it.

At his preschool (he is three, also), one of the kids there witnessed a shooting a few weeks ago. And they’ve been trying really hard to redirect him and try to explain that violence is most certainly not okay but have not been completely successful. So. Sometimes craziness does happen – I won’t be taking my son out of the school, but we have begun having similar talks with him re: violence that his teachers have been having with his friend and their class.

You know what? I’m coming around to the conclusion that I wouldn’t be much of a Mom if I didn’t freak out over things. Gotta embrace that part of me and then it calms down and I don’t freak out as much or as intensely.And, BTW, my 9 year old son checked out a book at the library called “Your Personal Weapon.” Talk about freaking out – I wanted to get him into therapy that very minute. My husband calmed me down explaining that ALL boys go through this phase and he’ll chill out about it soon.Hopefully, so will I! Peace…

We are gun-owners, so we’ve had to deal with discussing guns and how to play pretend with guns. It’s okay to pretend to shoot a gun, but we NEVER shoot people. I know it’s hard to know where to draw the line and I think that differs by family.

The bottom line is that you’re concerned and you will do what is best for your family!

Oh my. Things like this are what parents fret over. I have a post coming up on somewhat the same subject, and I’ll tweet it to you when it’s ready. Talk about freaking out with your 3 year old pretending. Imagine if your stepdad bought your FOUR year old a .22 rifle? Oh yes he did.

It’s brewing in my head, and when I’m not mad enough to SPIT bullets I’ll post.

I may not be the best person to answer your question, as I am one of those, ‘freaked out so much that we homeschool now’ moms. I would just like to say that you’d make a rockin’ addition as another face of homeschooling.

I was feeling this way this week too. Alittle boy who comes to our daycare plays guns all the time. My dd didn’t even know what a gun was until he started coming over. He made one kid cry when he pretended to shoot him dead and I had to tell him to stop (the crying kid’s dad died last year so death is not the best subject to play around with). My daughter is starting to make guns out of lego now and I am recoiling and imagining she’ll turn out to be a terrorist or something. I know I am over-reacting but my mind turns to homescholong at these times too. Kindergarden starts next year. Might be safer at home…. hmm. Love your pic of the gun rack, btw. Helps put this all into perspective.

Yeah, I saw, you already worked past this in the next post. And as a mother with only boys I don’t know if I have the right perspective on all the girly stuff. But my own anti-gun protests were all left completely in the it-doesn’t-matter-anyways heap when my oldest son, at about 2 1/2 years old, (never having had any kind of play gun before ever) turned the letter L from the fridge magnets into a gun. So I laughed, and threw my hands in the air in defeat, and we just have conversations about when it is appropriate, and when it is not.